2023-10-30 03:44:10
The mother of Colombian soccer player Luis Díaz, a player for England’s Liverpool, was “rescued” by the police from a kidnapping but the authorities are still working to free his father, said the president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, this Saturday.
“In operation padlock in Barrancas (northern Colombia), Luis Diaz’s mother has been rescued, we are still searching for the father,” the president said on the social network X, formerly Twitter.
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According to local media, Luis Manuel Díaz and Cilenis Marulanda were at a service station in their town, in the department of La Guajira, when armed men on motorcycles intercepted them.
“Thanks to the plan deployed in record time by the Police (…) we now have the mother safe and sound (…) we insist on searching for the father,” said police general William Salamanca, following speaking on the phone with the woman, according to a video posted on his social networks.
A black hawk military helicopter flies over the area to find the captors and the athlete’s father, the Army reported.
Luis Manuel Díaz was an amateur coach at the only soccer school in Barrancas, a town of regarding 38,000 inhabitants where his son from a very young age showed the speed, endurance and ability to avoid rival players that would later take him to the top of world soccer.
The family is of indigenous origin in the desert Caribbean department of La Guajira, bordering Venezuela and where 48% of its inhabitants are from the Wayuu people.
The Liverpool and Colombia national team winger has not commented on the kidnapping of his parents that went around the world.
Colombia is a country traversed by six decades of armed conflict that leaves a balance of 9.5 million victims, 38,028 of them kidnapped.
Through heaven and earth
Luis Manuel Díaz was key in his son’s meteoric rise because, unlike many of his colleagues, he always supported him in his aspiration to be a footballer, various sources told AFP in 2022 during a report in Barrancas.
Until late into the night, the authorities followed his trail without success.
The police are “devoted from now on to carrying out checkpoints, identifying people on motorcycles, private public service vehicles,” said General Salamanca, who traveled to the area.
“Lucho” Díaz, 26, shone in local soccer before moving to Porto in Portugal and Liverpool in England. Last year he was among the 20 finalists for the Ballon d’Or and was the top scorer in the 2021 Copa América.
For the first time, an indigenous person from Colombia is among the soccer elite, in a country where 4.4% of the population belongs to some indigenous community and its most famous athletes are born in the Black Pacific.
“From the moment the Attorney General’s Office learned of the kidnapping of the parents of the Colombian player Luis Díaz (…) a specialized team of prosecutors,” police and military have worked to find “the location of these people, clarify the facts and find those responsible,” indicated the investigating entity through the X network.
The Colombian Football Federation regretted what happened.
“We reject the security situation that the parents of our player Luis Díaz are going through. From the FCF we stand in solidarity with him and his entire family and we call for the relevant authorities to act as quickly as possible to resolve the situation,” he stated.
Along the same lines, the governor of La Guajira, Diala Wilches, earlier requested the release of both parents.
“We demand that the kidnappers be returned immediately, safe and sound,” he added.
La Guajira is the poorest department in Colombia (67.8%) and the epicenter of a childhood famine that killed at least 5,000 children in the last decade, according to the main indigenous organization.
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